New York Yankees potential trade target: Madison Bumgarner

The case against

The New York Yankees are one of the most analytically driven teams in all of baseball. It’s a big reason they drew a hard line in the sand with Dallas Keuchel. Frankly, they likely only pursued him because he was going to be an affordable option that wouldn’t cost them a vital draft pick.

Bumgarner is a better pitcher at this stage of his career than Keuchel is, but his reputation as an ace is stemming from a historic postseason performance in 2014. He carried the Giants to a World Series title and cemented himself as one of the great playoff pitchers of all time.

The New York Yankees value two big things in their pitchers, strikeout rates and groundball percentage. Bumgarner passes one of those tests. In 2019 he’s getting 9.33 strikeouts per nine innings, which is above his career average of 8.78.  The issue he faces is that he’s only getting ground balls at a 36 percent clip. Bumgarner’s tendency for flyballs could be something that becomes very troublesome at Yankee Stadium.

As for his stuff, fastball velocity is close to where it has been for the majority of his career. However MadBum’s changeup isn’t as good as it used to be, and his curveball has less bite than it did in his heyday.

What Bumgarner has done in the past likely won’t matter to Brian Cashman and his analytics department. Any deal would be as a rental, which could be a con because the Yankees would like to have control of the player beyond this year.